A group of my talented friends at work volunteer at the customer conference each year as entertainment for one of the nights as a band. They're named the Navitunes (after the name of the company), though I believe this name was imposed on them and is not necessarily their name of choice. In any case, they make a good cover band with the ability to manage a wide range of genres:
I also experimented with a little time-lapse sequence of the band setting up and running through sound-check:
Last week was a little nutty as one of our customers came to meet with us at our offices for the week. These circumstances prevented me from doing as much photography as I would normally like. So I came up with a selfish scheme that would afford me a little photo time and give them the opportunity to enjoy the mountains here as well. I offered to take them up Big Cottonwood Canyon for the sunset if they were interested. As I had hoped, they were more than willing to accept my offer and so we went.
In that they come from England, they were quite impressed with the vista at which we stopped. Heck, I live here and I am still just as impressed.
You all know the routine: Open your browser as wide as it will go and click the image to see the larger, more impressive version.
-CJ
A week ago last Thursday, I received word that I was to travel to Sao Paulo, Brasil on the following Sunday for a quick four-days-in-the-office-and-back business trip. As predicted, I had time only for the 11 hour work days, dinner, and then back to the hotel to call the girls and fall quickly to sleep from exhaustion. No photos at all. Drat. On the bright side, winter in Sao Paulo offers incredibly comfortable temperatures, perfect for dinner at the outdoor restaurants.
The Brasilians seem to really, really like red meat, as evidenced by the seemingly endless number of churasco (Brazilian BBQ) restaurants. I have to hand it to them, they do their form of barbecue with passion and style. Once you turn your little red/green disc to green, you're inundated with all forms of red meat. When you turn that little disc back over to red, it usually takes the zealous servers a few more rounds before they realize that you're really stuffed with all the red meat that you can possibly digest in the next 30 - 60 days and that they really should stop bringing more. It might help if I spoke a tad more Portuguese.
Upon my return on the 4th, DD strongly encouraged me to bring the camera over to her folks house for the Independence day dinner to get some shots of the garden that is blooming quite nicely, thanks to our moderate, wet spring. I rarely get any sleep on international flights for a variety of reasons, but photo opportunities and a little holiday dinner with the family kept me going. I arrived home from the airport, showered, and headed over to meet everyone for dinner. Fortunately, the clouds provided some nice light for flower shots:
I'm very tired but very excited. Why, you ask? Because I just posted the first two episodes of "Dingy Room in a Nowhere Town," a podcast about the music of my very talented youngest brother. You can listen to the podcast now (even if you don't have an iPod) over at CJ3's blog site. Happy listening!
Winter is clearly in full swing here in the mountains. Little EV has put her new purple, high performance, steerable sled through fairly extensive tests down the slope in the back. We determined that Daddy may be a little too heavy for this ride except when the snow exceeds at least 8 to 10 inches of accumulation. Little EV noted that we should put "rock clearing" of the sled run on our to-do list for this spring so that Daddy can ride without scraping the bottom of the sled when we encounter rocks.
Fortunately we spread the wildflower seeds in the front a couple of months ago and we are hoping for a nice, fairly low maintenance first round of landscaping. With a few exceptions, our native grass is covered with snow.
I received a few requests to hear a bit more about the new job. My new job is great.
The new job feels a bit like an assignment to understand the principles of an internal combustion engine and be able to answer all questions about it, how it can break, and define how we will make it better in the coming years--a gratifying yet overwhelming task. But, that's only because I just started and have a lot to learn. I am the reporting systems business analyst. That means that when anyone, customers or fellow employees, have a question about reports or accessing data, I'm up to bat. So far I have navigated through a couple of gratifying experiences where customers had detailed questions about how to get specific types of information, I researched the issue, and then provided working solutions.
My responsibilities also extend into the realm of product management. This means that by collaborating with others, I define the philosophy and future direction of the product as far as reporting is concerned. So, for example, the product managers of the core reservation system have outlined some of the requirements for future releases. One of the most substantive requirements is that the system will be capable of allowing customers to code-share. This is the practice of airlines selling multi-leg tickets, say from City A to City C, where the carrier from which you bought the ticket gets you from City A to City B, and then they reserve a seat for you on a different carrier to get you from City B to City C. So given that requirement, I get to define how the reporting aspects of the system will evolve to handle those requirements. It seems simple enough but will undoubtedly keep me occupied for a long time to come. I enjoy these types of mental puzzles, particularly when information systems are involved. Yes, I'm pretty comfortable with my nerdiness.
Happily, the drive is quicker than I expected--roughly 40 minutes each direction when the road conditions allow. Admittedly, the drive has been a little rough, though not unbearable, because the conditions have been icy. On Wednesday last week a fellow traveler that passed me in his VW Jetta suddenly lost all traction, spun until almost sideways, nearly hit the center concrete barrier and then slid to the emergency lane on the opposite side of the Interstate. Then, the next day I passed an overturned SUV and several other vehicles involved in a collision in the same area. Fortunately, emergency services had already responded and it looked like there were no fatalities. I think the main issue is that some drivers attempt to navigate our mountain Interstate a little, or in some cases a lot, too quicly. My front wheel drive car equipped with snow tires seems to do pretty well as long as I drive at reasonable speeds. Coming over the pass one day last week, reasonable was about 25 miles per hour. But again, this is limited to this season of the year.
Now regarding the Mac...where to start? I like our iMac a lot. It is elegant in terms of design and function and the operating system is pretty solid. But the hardware--not so much. We're having issues with random horizontal lines showing up in application windows, and in a few cases, complete system freezes. So, to determine whether this is a software or hardware issue, I reinstalled the OS. We still get the random horizontal lines, though I have not, as yet, experienced any freezing. While that's a little bit of an ambiguous answer, my working hypothesis is hardware. It's one of those funky issues that are hard to nail down and is probably hardware related but the Apple people may hesitate to jump in and replace the motherboard without a whole lot of testing.
I must say that the $169 Apple Care plan was a good investment. Maybe I'll show up at the store and the friendly Apple worker will smile and say, "No problem Dean, we'll just swap out your iMac and have a new one on your doorstep by Thursday. Will that work ok?" Visualization is powerful. ;-) Stay tuned for the rest of the story.
Sibrich asked about the photos in the banner and here are little descriptions of each exposure:
1) Bryce Canyon in May, 2000. Mrs. D makes an appearance on the trail as we make our way back up to the canyon rim. Regrettably, I don't remember the name of the trail. I guess it is time for another Bryce Canyon trip!
2) Also Bryce Canyon in 2000. Your basic wide angle shot of the canyon from the rim. Hardest part about a shot like this is to keep all of our fellow tourists out of the frame.
3) A view to the south from our basement door after a snowfall. I don't know why I put this one in the banner as it isn't my favorite shot or even in the top 10,000 (if I have taken that many frames). I reserve the right to change this banner at any time without prior warning.
4 & 5) Sunset from the dining room window about 2 weeks ago. I wanted to experiment with the "rule of thirds" which suggests that you typically want to place the horizon either 1/3 or 2/3 of the way down the frame. I sort of missed on that second one. Mrs. D says that they're very similar and I again reserve to the right to modify them at any time. Which of the two do you prefer and why?
Tomorrow is my first day on the new job. I feel both excited and nervous. I attended the company party on Friday and was happy to find that most of the employees were a bit more mature, unpretentious, and down-to-earth than at my former employer.
My new team also invited me out to lunch with them a couple of weeks ago and took me out for sushi. I am not particularly fond of sushi but thought better of revealing that fact given the circumstances. I had the same impression at lunch--that they are more mature, though they don't take themselves too seriously. Next week I'll have the juicy first impressions from actual on-the-job experience.
This weeks photo takes us back to October--a butterfly in our front yard:
Employment Haiku:
I work at my job
give the answers they ask for
they send a paycheck
That pretty much sums up my perspective on working for a company that I don't direct. It pays the bills and every year they give me a little pay raise. Every once in a while I produce something of which I am proud--something that took a lot of hard work and has the potential to improve the business for the sake of the customers and business owners. Something truly innovative.
But this leaves a bit of a void, to be honest. I innovate and the company either takes the idea and runs with it (this rarely happens in my current job) or they say, "Nice work Dean--you're really a great analyst." And then, the idea dies out as they direct me to move on to other projects. In my current job, the latter is the most common case. This is partly my fault and partly theirs. Partly it is an issue based on the fact that I work remotely.
In any case, these circumstances have lit an almost overwhelming desire in me to start my own business--something I can manage along with one or two other people that does something worthwhile for society. A couple of my friends and I are working on a business to reduce junk mail. Another friend and I are developing a niche job posting board. And a couple of my siblings and I have some other web business ideas brewing, too. Oh, and of course I have my book.
Speaking of my book, I spent most of last week in the east for work and made some decent progress on the book in the evenings. I've always wanted to experience writing a book. It's a little tricky getting all the ideas out of my brain and into the manuscript in a coherent sort of way. My outline helps, of course, but I'm pretty convinced that I've got a sizable editing job ahead of me. I'm also trying to figure out how to fund the recording equipment I'd like to get to record interviews with people that have built custom homes in the past. It's all a lot of fun and I'm certain I'll learn many lessons along the way.
And what's this about snow? We have snow here. We have lots of snow. I hope that EV gets a sled for Christmas. I hope the sled can hold at least two people. Now visualize EV, Mrs. D, and I playing with a sled somewhere out here:
